


The Many-Colored Qrow

by 425599167



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Found Family, Gen, Human Trafficking, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28161723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/425599167/pseuds/425599167
Summary: Against his better judgement, Qrow allowed Ironwood to cover his accommodations following a mission to Atlas, ending up at the Glass Unicorn. After an unbearable stay of roughly thirty seconds, Qrow was about to leave before noticing the concerningly young and frightened girl cleaning the place.
Relationships: Qrow Branwen & Cinder Fall
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58





	The Many-Colored Qrow

**Author's Note:**

> Here you go, another entry in the sure to be popular “What if somebody with a spine found ten-year-old Cinder?” AU.
> 
> This is my first RWBY fic, since normally I write to fill in something I feel is missing, and unlike Star Wars, I’ve generally found RWBY delivers. Once I had this idea while watching Midnight (like everyone else, it seems) I couldn’t get it out of my head. Regarding the timeline, Cinder’s age is pretty vague, but I’m lowballing and assuming she was 20-21 during V1, making her about five years older than Ruby, so this takes place ten years before the series began.
> 
> I don’t have a definitive ending in mind, this is just a pretty straightforward AU I came up with some scenes for and want to keep a pretty small scale, not like a complete retelling with this new Cinder, because that would be a ridiculous amount of effort even by my standards. My general goal is that every chapter _could_ be a conclusion, and would be satisfying as such, but I don’t know exactly when I’ll stop. Every time I've thought I knew where to end it, I got ideas.

_Why do I keep making the mistake of trusting James?_ Qrow wondered to himself as he stared up at the sign of the ‘Glass Unicorn’, an absurdly high-class hotel personally recommended by Lt. General Ironwood. That personal recommendation should’ve been Qrow’s cue to find somewhere else to sleep before catching the first airship back to Vale in the morning.

The scouting mission through the tundra turned up no signs of Salem cooking up any new horrors in the uninhabitable reaches of northern Solitas, and Qrow was glad for it to be over. Aura or no, it really didn’t take very long for something as small as a bird to freeze. At least once the school break was over and he was back to teaching at Signal, he’d have an excuse to not get forced to indulge Jimmy’s paranoia. It’d taken some squabbling for Oz to convince him that he was the best available Huntsman.

Gripping his travel bag, Qrow braced himself as he trudged up the steps and through the front door. It was about what he expected, in that the name was obnoxious nonsensical. There was some glass. No unicorn imagery.

“Welcome to the Glass Unicorn,” the hotel owner said, sizing Qrow up as he approached with a slightly drunken swagger, shambling forth in his musty greyscale outfit and the gaudy, multicolored travel bag Tai had lent him slung back over his shoulder. Take it all in, lady. “You must be Mr. Branwen. I’m delighted that such a respected huntsman as yourself is staying in my hotel. Your room is waiting,” she said with a veneer of politeness Qrow saw right through. The ‘We do not serve Faunus’ sign on the wall behind her made it easy, and Qrow felt a touch annoyed at himself for walking all the way through the lobby before noticing it.

Eyes moving between that sign and the hotelier, her expression was quickly deteriorating from politeness to confusion to impatience at his lack of response as she so graciously held out the room key. Qrow turned back around and was going to leave without saying a word, while thinking of many words to say to James next time they spoke, most with four letters.

There was a young girl to his right he hadn’t noticed on entering, crouched next to a coffee table, dusting the glass statue of a Beowolf that decorated it. Making eye contact with her, she flinched, snapping her attention away from him and moving the duster quicker, trying to get it done as Qrow studied her. She looked way too young to be working this job, and he could tell she was fully aware he was staring at her while forcing herself to look ahead and not to look at him again. Clean outfit, but she looked unhealthy and malnourished, her hair poorly cut and tied in a pair of messy pigtails.

“Uh, little girl?” he said, taking a few steps closer. “Do you... work here?”

Refusing to respond in favor of finishing the cleaning, she avoided looking at Qrow as she got up, scurrying around him to her next task.

“Hey, wait-”

In an unpredictable turn of bad luck, the table leg broke, sending the statue sliding and crashing into the floor, the girl stumbling back to get out of the way of the shattering glass, left foot stepping on a large shard with several jagged edges. Crying out in pain, she collapsed backwards, looking at her foot and using the handle of her duster to push it out of her slipper.

“Dammit, don’t-” Qrow began, knowing that removing the intruding object like that would make the bleeding worse, but it was too late. Behind him, Qrow heard the rapid approach of heels clacking across the floor. Rather than trying to help, the hotelier loomed over her, scowling down at the girl. “Why do you have a kid this young working here?”

“The Glass Unicorn is family-owned, and this is my daughter,” she replied in a tone like she was describing something scraped off the bottom of her expensive shoes.

“Your daughter has glass in her foot. Make yourself useful and _get a first aid kit_ ,” Qrow snapped as he applied pressure on the slipper, the best he could do to stop the bleeding, telling the girl, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

“Ugh, not on the carpet-” she said, worried more about where the girl’s blood was falling than her injury.

With as much haste and care as possible, Qrow scooped the girl up and set her down in a nearby chair, away from the glass, with her dripping foot over the marble floor. It seemed the fastest way to get this idiot to actually help, otherwise he’d had to run for the kit on his own while the girl kept bleeding. The hotelier strolled away into a back room, finally leaving Qrow alone with her daughter.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Qrow asked, trying to distract the girl from her foot, getting her to take her eyes off it while he kept applying pressure.

“Cinder,” she replied quietly.

“I’m Qrow Branwen, a Huntsman. Sorry about the mess. Not your lucky day,” said Qrow, Cinder not replying at all. “You seem pretty young to be working like this. Does she treat you like this normally?”

“I-” Cinder began, mouth snapping shut and eyes turning from Qrow as he heard the approach of those shoes again.

“I’m terribly sorry for my daughter’s behavior,” the hotelier said as she handed the kit to Qrow, her tone making him wonder if anything she said ever lined up with the emotions she projected. With some bandages on hand, Qrow got the girl’s slipper off as carefully as possible and began cleaning the wound. It wasn’t as bad as it he’d been afraid of, but she’d need stitches.

“No trouble at all. The statue and table were all my fault,” Qrow replied. Recalling that James had offered to cover the night’s expenses, and was in contact with the owner, he added, “Put any damages on my bill.”

“How was it _your_ doing?” she asked skeptically, unwilling to absolve Cinder of blame.

Rather than explain how his semblance caused misfortune to follow him everywhere and harm the people near him, Qrow lied, “I set my weapon down onto the table, and it broke. Carrying it around with me all the time, I often forget how heavy it is. If I only had a brain, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Eyeing Harbinger, a hefty piece of metal even in its compact form, it seemed the hotelier was buying the story despite it never leaving his person as she’d watched him leave. You could always count on Atlas to ignore what their own eyes told them when it struck them as more convenient.

Qrow took out a pair of tweezers, checking for any more glass he could remove safely.

“You should’ve been more careful,” the hotelier said to Cinder, watching Qrow work and dismissively adding, “It’s only a few cuts.”

“There’re still a few pieces of glass stuck in her skin,” Qrow said, turning back to properly yell at this rotten snob. “She needs to be taken to a hospital- DAMMIT!” Qrow jerked his hand back in pain when he caught on to how hot it suddenly felt, turning down to see Cinder scowling in a rage at her foot, which was enveloped in an orange glow, until a second later a few drips of molten glass slid out and onto the floor. The lobby stank of dried, charred blood.

“I can get back to work now,” she said, looking up at her mother with the most terrified distortion of a smile Qrow had ever witnessed.

“No, you can’t,” Qrow said firmly, ignoring the pain of the burn on his hand as the molten glass cooled and solidified on the marble. Once he’d confirmed she’d succeeded at getting all the glass out, he proceeded the clean and disinfect the wound while disregarding the stare of the hotelier he could feel in the back of his head, finally bandaging the wound up.

“Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Branwen. I will look after Cinder from here,” the hotelier said coldly. “If I presume correctly, you were _leaving_ before this accident occurred.”

“You okay with that?” he asked Cinder, and when he got no answer, he finally quit trying to get her to respond with her mother around. Qrow turned to the pair of girls approaching him, showing up late to the calamity. Definitely the daughters of the owner, one with curly hair of the same color, one with straight. Unless Cinder took very strongly after their father, she wasn’t a blood relative.

Upon seeing their sister was injured, the two started _grinning_ to each other.

This place was one warning sign after another, in addition to the literal sign at the desk, and there was no way he was going to leave Cinder here like this, which put him in a dilemma. Despite how obviously wrong the situation was, a foreign Huntsman and an ‘adopted’ girl pressing charges against a wealthy Atlesian who probably had the paperwork making her the girl’s legal guardian probably wouldn’t fare well.

“I think I’d rather stay and keep an eye on your daughter, if you don’t mind,” Qrow replied, staying at Cinder’s side, aware that she still hadn’t said a word, and a glance showed how scared she was, and it wasn’t the sight of her blood that had her worried. “Like I said, this was my fault.”

“I insist,” the owner replied, eyes locked with Qrow. There wasn’t anything he could do at the moment, he needed more evidence of whatever was happening, something that couldn’t be refuted or ignored, and he wasn’t going to get it so long as Cinder’s mother knew Qrow was there watching.

Looking at Cinder one last time and trying to show her a reassuring expression, Qrow got up, took his bag, and walked out of the hotel and into the cold, stepping around the corner to come up with a plan.

After checking that he had his scroll, wallet, flask, and spare dust cartridges on his person, Qrow left what was left of the survival kit from his mission and the few sets of his spare clothes in the multicolored case behind as dead weight. It wasn’t like he couldn’t pay Tai back for the case later.

Pressing himself close to the side of the building, he didn’t see anyone in the lobby through the glass doors, slowly creaking one open, transforming and flying in and up around the atrium. Perching on the second-floor banister, Qrow saw an open door to the kitchen, hearing voices from inside as he glid down. Landing to the side of the door and changing back into human form, he could hear the hotelier speaking, and pulled out his scroll to start recording.

“I should make you clean up the rest of the glass barefoot,” the hotelier said, as Qrow slowly moved his scroll’s camera to the doorway, unsure of which direction she was facing and not wanting it to be noticed. He scowled as he could hear Cinder writhing and crying in pain, wondering what was being done to her and determined to end it as soon as he could.

After a few seconds of looking in, the scroll loudly beeped an alert saying it was almost out of power, and the kitchen went totally quiet.

_So much for the subtle approach._

_Dammit, I thought I had this stupid thing on silent._

“Sorry to bother you again, Madame, but I left my scroll,” Qrow quipped as he stepped into the door frame, waving the device around as the screen went dead.

For the first time, the hotelier seemed genuinely alarmed. In her hand, Qrow spotted a remote with a single bright yellow button. The same color as in Cinder’s necklace. The same color as lightning dust. The girl was kneeling down, hands shaking as she looked up at him, and Qrow knew this was far, far worse than he’d expected.

“I suggest you hand over your scroll to me before you cause any more harm,” the woman said, entering into a standoff and raising the remote, thumb hovering over the button as Cinder panted on the floor to the side of them. Rather than comply with the order, Qrow collapsed the scroll and put it back into his pocket, and out came Harbinger, its blade covering more than half the distance between them, the fast motion making an air current that swept over the woman’s hair.

“Put. That. _Down_ ,” Qrow growled, and the shock of a weapon being drawn on her only tempering her haughtiness for a few seconds.

“How _dare_ you come into my establishm-”

Harbinger extended into its scythe configuration, bringing the blade even closer to the hotelier’s neck.

“I’m not going to ask again.”

With an impossibly condescending smirk, she turned the remote button side down and dropped it, hitting the floor and giving Cinder another shock.

Needing both hands, Qrow swung his scythe down and planted it in the floor, cracks spreading through several of the tiles. As Cinder spasmed, he got the remote off the floor and fiddled with it to remove and toss away the power source, Cinder’s gaze following the discarded dust cell while Qrow stuffed the inactive device in his pocket and retrieved Harbinger.

“Cinder, come with me,” he said, deciding it was better to just run for it. Get the kid someplace safe, then worry about what to do next. As the girl nervously glanced between him and her ‘mother’, she took fast, hobbling steps towards him. Once she was behind him, Qrow expected Cinder to stay close. Instead, she broke out into a run, and kept on running, the injury to her foot and lack of one slipper doing little to slow her down as she saw her opening and bolted through the lobby.

With his head turned towards the fleeing girl, Qrow didn’t notice the serving tray being swung at him until it knocked him back and out through the kitchen door, the hotelier rushing past towards the phone at the front desk. Before she could call for the police, Qrow sliced through the phone along with half the desk, grumbling at how badly this was going, directing one final glare at the owner before running out into the street.

A kid in a pristine white outfit shouldn’t be this hard to find late at night, but Cinder sure wasn’t making it easy as Qrow followed drops of blood down the street. Calling out her name would only make her run from him, trying to corner her would only make her more afraid.

It must not have taken the hotelier very long to find another phone, as police cars came down the street towards the Glass Unicorn. Getting into the alleyway, Qrow vanished, and an unassuming black bird flew up and over the incoming cars, gliding through alleys, periodically setting down to see which direction the trail of blood went.

* * *

Hiding in a back alley under a warm vent, her foot hurting horribly, Cinder wondered what she could do. Not knowing where a hospital was, terrified that if she went to one, they would send her back where she’d run from.

A black bird fluttered down and landed in the middle of the alley, its small head turning and looking at her with pale red eyes. There wasn’t much reason to be worried by something so small, and she largely ignored the harmless bird as it hopped in a winding path until it was in front of her.

What would happen to her? How could she work like this? What would happen to her if she couldn’t work? Being hurt never got her any leniency before, but those were only little cuts and bruises.

“Hey,” came a gravelly voice that sounded very much like that man from the hotel, making her jump. Cinder had been looking away from the bird, but the voice had come from its direction, leaving Cinder very, very confused by what was happening, saying nothing as she stared at the bird in case it spoke again. Which it soon did. “Are the bandages on your foot holding together?”

“...Y- Yes?” Cinder said, definitely recognizing that voice this time as it came out of the tiny animal.

“Cinder, I know you’re scared, but please listen to me. I’m going to make sure you never have to go back to that hotel again. First, we need to get you to a doctor, preferably not one from Atlas,” said the mysterious talking bird.

“You’re Qrow, the Huntsman?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you a bird?”

“That’s... hard to explain. I’m going to change back, if that’s okay,” he said, then Cinder frowned and shook her head. If he was offering a choice, she’d rather he stay in a shape small enough for her to fight off.

“Are you a Faunus?” she asked, knowing Faunus had animal traits but never hearing of any like this. There was a sign excluding them from the hotel, and anyone whom her mother hated and spoke of in a disgusted tone, Cinder felt more willing to trust.

“No, I’m not,” Qrow replied, to Cinder’s disappointment.

“Why are you trying to help me?”

“I’m a Huntsman. It’s our role to protect the people of Remnant, and right now, I can’t think of anyone who needs protecting more than you,” Qrow said, as Cinder studied him skeptically. “If you don’t want to take my word for it, think back to what I did when we met.”

Cinder thought as she shivered. He’d reached out to talk to her, something very few people did. He’d tended to her when she’d been hurt, something _no one_ did. Stood up to her mother, took the blame from Cinder, and then...

“You left me with her,” Cinder said angrily, hot vapor rising from the damp ground where her hands lay.

“I only did that because I knew she wouldn’t do anything incriminating if she knew I was nearby. Then I snuck back in to gather evidence and catch whatever she was going to do to you.”

“ _You said you forgot your scroll_ ,” Cinder growled, feeling that she was being lied to.

“That was me being a smartass! Remember, after that I stopped her from shocking you, and I disabled the remote. I’ve also recorded her hurting you,” he said. Cinder did remember, and couldn’t understand why he’d done those things. “Do you have anywhere to go?”

“No,” Cinder scoffed.

“I think our best chance is to get down to Mantle, try and find someplace for the night,” said Qrow. “I won’t be able to take you there if I’m like this.”

The only things Cinder knew about Mantle were what she’d heard her mother and the guests say. Described as being filled with Faunus, nothing of value, nothing like Atlas at all, the kind of place her mother would never want to be.

Going there sounded like a great idea to her.

“...You can change back now,” she said.

The Huntsman transformed back into a human, kneeling down and pulling out her slipper.

“Snagged this on my way out. The sole’s ruined, but it’ll hide and help hold the bandages on, and keep you level if you need to walk,” Qrow said, holding it out towards her foot and gently sliding it on, Cinder cringing as it pressed against the cuts. As Qrow reached down to help her, Cinder hesitantly reached up until she finally grasped his hand and was pulled up.

* * *

Carried through the streets, Cinder held on tightly, wearing Qrow’s grey coat both to keep the kid warm on a chilly night and to cover up her outfit, particularly zipping the coat up enough to hide her necklace. That hotelier knew it was locked around her neck and had probably told the police about it as a means of identifying Cinder, like the collar on any runaway pet.

Qrow took the time to reflect on the many, many ways he had fucked this situation up so utterly that the God of Darkness must be watching and taking notes from this superior master of destruction.

He’d destroyed an unarmed civilian’s phone to prevent her from calling the police, left behind multiple instances of property damage in the hotel provably caused by his weapon, chased a frightened, bleeding girl through the streets, let the remote slide around in his pockets during the chase and wear off the hotelier’s fingerprints, put his own fingerprints on the remote, was currently walking around with said remote and a child wearing the corresponding shock collar around her neck and no means of removing it. There was bad luck, and then there was whatever you wanted to call this.

There was also the issue that he’d never actually learned that hotelier’s name to report to law enforcement. It was known that she owned the Glass Unicorn, but it was pretty odd he had no name for her.

The only bit of evidence he had in his favor was the recording, and against the ways he’d incriminated himself in the last hour, he wasn’t confident going to Atlas police. Since he didn’t want to stop moving towards the airport or make Cinder listen to herself being tortured, Qrow hadn’t even had a chance to look through the recording and see how much of the ordeal it really captured.

Out on the street, there weren’t very many people to blend in with, forcing them to be evasive, and progress south towards the airport was slow. His bird transformation let him quickly get up and down from vantage points, seeing where police vehicles were moving and in what pattern, alternating between carrying Cinder and having her sneak on her own. With her injury, he tried to keep her either still or off the ground, but a few times it was unavoidable.

Once, a police car was moving slowly enough for Qrow to land on it, amplifying his misfortune and leading to some kind of engine problem, taking the car out of commission and drawing others to arrive to help as he and Cinder moved on and away from them. Bad luck for one person could be good luck for another, and eventually they reached the airport, descending down towards the airship hangars.

There was no way Qrow would be able to purchase boarding passes without being identified, especially with his weapon there to draw attention and demanding he present his Huntsman license to bring it on. There was plenty of cash on him, what he needed was to find someone who was short of money and wasn’t too friendly with Atlas law enforcement. There were people who worked in Atlas but lived in Mantle traveling to and from the city, and it didn’t take long to find a suitably disgruntled waitress, presenting the cost of the passes and offering twice as much when the passes were with him.

That took care of the passes themselves, now he needed to get them on one of the ships and make it through the trip. There were police officers checking passes, and security scanners all passengers needed to go through. Amplifying his semblance again, a blown fuse knocked out the lights gave them an opening as Qrow transformed and flew between the rafters above as Cinder crouched and snuck by unnoticed through the dark. Once returned to human form on the other side, he picked her up and they approached the airship boarding doors, showed their passes to the attendant, and settled her into the seat next to them, letting out a breath and glad for a moment of rest.

“You doing alright?” Qrow asked, as if there weren’t any number of things for Cinder to be concerned by.

“My foot,” Cinder said, and Qrow noticed a new blotch of red on the side of her left slipper, cursing himself for making her walk on it. This kid needed a doctor before that got badly infected.

There were other people stuffed into the airship, but it was a short flight down, and soon they were landed at the edge of Mantle. Getting out of the airship, Qrow mingled in with the departing passengers, trying to find the nearest clinic, or at least a store he could buy some bandages and possibly sutures. Carrying Cinder around like this wasn’t too tiring, she didn’t feel any heavier than Yang, and Harbinger did more to weigh him down.

As the outflowing crowd grew thinner, Qrow spotted a green holographic sign far down the street, marking a clinic, and picked up the pace. If someone was there, great, if it wasn’t in service, he could get through the lock and would leave enough lien to cover the supplies he was going to steal. The door was unlocked, and Qrow walked into a small, welcoming single-bed clinic.

A yawning man stepped out from behind the desk to Qrow’s right, dark skin, brown hair including a thick beard, adjusting his glasses to get a look at his visitors. “Welcome to Pietro’s Pharmacy.”

“I take it you’re Pietro?” asked Qrow.

“I sure am. Dr. Pietro Polendina, happy to-”

“Got a patient here,” Qrow interrupted, shifting the way he was holding Cinder and giving Dr. Polendina a view of her bleeding foot.

“Take her over to the bed, please,” the doctor replied much more urgently as Qrow carried Cinder over and onto the bed in the corner of the room. Once Polendina put on sterile gloves, he brought out bandages and other supplies to look at the injury, removing the old, bloody ones. “What caused this, exactly?”

“Stepped on some glass shards,” Qrow answered truthfully.

“I don’t see any remaining glass, so you did excellent work removing the pieces,” Polendina noted. That semblance of Cinder’s was oddly picky in what it affected, evaporating and calcining her spilt blood while doing nothing to cauterize the wound, nor did the heat of liquid glass cause her any further discomfort. With all the strange and spectacular semblances he’d seen over the years, Qrow wondered if this only applied to the heat generated by the semblance, or if it could make her completely fireproof. Someone this young managing to unlock it wasn’t unheard of, but doing so required an intense physical or emotional trigger, and this girl didn’t look any older than ten. With her living situation, it hadn’t been in any kind of controlled training exercise, it was pain and rage that brought it out.

Finding this clinic was the best thing to happen tonight, though Qrow really wished this place didn’t have such large windows, standing with his back to the corner wall as Polendina inspected the lacerations, again confirming there was no remaining glass, cleaning the wounds. The doctor was a very kind man, and definitely better with kids in this situation than Qrow was. Putting a bandage on Ruby's scraped knee did not compare. That kindness wasn’t enough to make Cinder laugh at his demeanor, or smile, really, but she was definitely at her calmest so far. Even as Polendina stitched up the largest cuts and wrapped her foot in clean bandages, she seemed less skittish than before.

Examining the small clinic, Qrow saw shelves of what he assumed were medical records, and schematics of various prosthetic parts with some components and tools strewn over a table.

“You an engineer, too?” Qrow asked, and Dr. Polendina nodded.

“Oh yes, I dabble in many different fields. Medicine, prosthetics, biomechanics, aura-electronic interactions-”

“I need you to look at that necklace, tell me if you’ve ever seen something like this and if you can remove it.”

As Qrow drew the remote out of his pocket, Polendina hardly needed more than a glance between it and Cinder’s necklace to identify what they really were, piecing together a few things about his patient, this meek, scrawny little girl in a servant’s uniform. Murmuring something worriedly, he inspected the necklace as Cinder stared straight ahead, sitting rigid.

“It looks easy enough to remove if the trigger isn’t active. Circuit’s quite simple, no safeguards that I can see,” Polendina said, connecting some wire to ground it as a precaution, then retrieving a small pair of wire cutters and clipping the necklace at the back, Cinder flinching at the sound of snapping metal as the two strands were severed.

As if seeing a child being electrically shocked wasn’t infuriating enough, removing the necklace revealed a circle of electrical burns around her neck. It was fortunate for the hotelier that Cinder was here, letting Qrow focus more on her safety than on what he wanted to do to her abuser.

When the necklace was pulled away and into Cinder’s line of sight, seeing that it was off, she let out what sounded like a mixture of a relieved sigh and a terrified gasp. Qrow stuck with her until her breathing steadied, unsure what else to do or what that meant, only hoping it was a good sign. Now that she was properly treated, Polendina brought out some blankets and snacks he had available, which Cinder immediately began eating. The kid looked like she was starving and exhausted, finally run out of adrenaline.

The remote getting tossed around in his pocket had removed the hotelier’s fingerprints, and Qrow had left plenty on it. It wasn’t going to get any worse if he kept touching it, so now Qrow took a moment to inspect what he was dealing with. As expected, the necklace has a crystal of lightning dust in its center, made to look like an elegant bit of jewelry. The remote had no markings on it, no serial number, logos, or anything else traceable. No leads that could be used to find whoever made this awful thing and connect them to the hotel.

Pulling his scroll from the charger helpfully provided by Polendina, Qrow checked and confirmed there was a new recording stored on it.

“Doc, can I talk to you outside for a minute?” Qrow asked, Polendina nodding and following him to the door.

“Where are you going?” Cinder asked, and from how skittish she was, Qrow wasn’t sure if she wanted him to stay with her, or she didn’t want to be cut out of a conversation she knew would be about her.

“I just need to talk to the doctor for a moment. We’ll be back in a bit,” Qrow said, shutting the door. “You ever see something like this necklace?”

“I have seen the technology. Not in something this... _elegant_ before. That’s new, to me, at least,” he said grimly.

“Any idea where it was manufactured?”

“The remote and the ‘gem’ are made from common components, the rest looks like the work of a competent jeweler. How did you find that girl?” he asked. After receiving a complete explanation of everything that happened, Pietro was stunned by how horrible the situation was and how it had escalated. “Well. Now, I normally try to keep a positive attitude about things, but-”

“I fucked everything up short of getting myself arrested and seeing Cinder sent right back to that hotel, where she’ll be treated even worse for trying to run away? Yeah, I’m aware,” Qrow grumbled, taking a sip from his flask as he looked up at the shattered moon. “And the night’s still young.”

* * *

Looking out the window into the streets of Mantle, nothing stood between Cinder and the door, but Qrow and the doctor were probably right outside. If she needed to, now that she knew she could melt glass, she could make a hole through the window. The door exited to a different side of the building than the windows, if she left now, they wouldn’t see her.

Cinder leaned against the doorway with her ear at the gap, listening to the adults’ conversation, wanting to know what they were really planning for her. Wondering when they were going to leave her, or worse, send her back.

Hearing the threatening voice of her mother, Cinder nearly bolted to the window, only hesitating when she heard the sound of her own screams. Furious at what she heard, her burning fingers scraped against the wall, paint cracking and flaking off at her touch.

“That’s all I was able to record,” she heard Qrow say. “It only has a split second of the necklace being activated, and with the camera angle, her ‘mother’ isn’t clearly holding the remote.”

A recording. It was only a recording, and Qrow had been telling her the truth about trying to get evidence of what was being done to her.

“I’ll help you any way that I can,” said Dr. Polendina.

“You’ve already helped a lot, and thanks for all you’ve done,” said Qrow. “I’ll figure a way to get her out of the kingdom, right now, I just want to make sure she’s healthy enough to move.”

“Even if you escape Atlas, she’s going to need professional counseling,” said the doctor. “That child has been through some terrible experiences, do you know where to take her?”

“I have... no idea where to begin,” Qrow said. “I know a safe place in Patch I can take her for a few days at least until I get it figured out.”

“Well, that’s a start, but she needs to be taken to mental health professionals. And get her into child protective services in Vale,” Polendina began. Most of those terms weren’t familiar to Cinder. Nothing sounded bad, though.

“Hold on, let me make notes. I’m not gonna remember any of this tomorrow,” Qrow said.

Listening for only a few more moments, Cinder returned to her bed, eating the snacks left out for her as she decided to settle in. There was a screwdriver on the workbench sharp enough to be used as a weapon which she took, practicing holding the grip with one hand, heating the metal with the other, then hiding it under the folds of the blanket she’d been given. Just in case.

* * *

“Child protection services has their own requirements,” Pietro explained. “Those children need more specialized treatment than a typical agency can provide. If she's taken in by a Valean family, as an international adoption that has its own rules. With her legally being an Atlesian citizen, assuming she _was_ adopted legally, there would be an issue with her guardian giving consent to be adopted by a new family, unless that hotel woman loses guardianship of her.”

“You certainly know a lot about childcare and adoption laws,” Qrow noticed, barely following along as he typed keywords into his scroll to look up later when he didn't feel like he was about to pass out from exhaustion.

“I’d often thought about starting a family,” said Pietro, a bit sadly. “Was never quite able to find the time with my projects. A child needs more time and focus than I could’ve provided.”

“Hate to ask more of you, but could you go get some food for her? Preferably something hot, I don’t know how long it’s been since she’s been fed properly,” Qrow said, handing over some lien to pay him back. “I’d do it myself, but I shouldn’t even have stepped outside when the police are probably looking for me.”

“There are a few stores around that are open this late. I'll be back in a bit,” Pietro said, walking off drown the street as Qrow stepped back inside, seeing Cinder sitting on the bed and ravenously eating handfuls of cashews left behind by a recent patient.

As he closed the door behind him, Qrow noticed a scorched, flaking section of paint on the wall by the door, which after spending so many minutes examining everything in this room, he was pretty sure was new.

“Were you listening?” he asked.

Continuing to quietly eat cashews, Cinder froze at being caught, then slowly nodded her head, and Qrow shrugged it off.

“As long as you’re okay, then fine... Cinder, do you remember when you unlocked your semblance?” he asked, as Cinder stared at him, not understanding what he was asking. “Do you know what a semblance is?”

Cinder shook her head.

“Something I can teach you about when we’re out of trouble,” said Qrow, feeling horribly fatigued and collapsing into the chair at Pietro’s desk. At the Glass Unicorn, he’d already been tired, then he’d been carrying a kid halfway through Atlas, burned through a good chunk of his aura, then carried her halfway through Mantle.

“Where did Dr. Polendina go?”

“Getting more food for us. I know you could use it,” Qrow said.

Cinder once again asked, “Why are you helping me?”

Keeping himself from dozing off until he’d provided a convincing answer, Qrow wanted to go into detail about why he and so many others became Huntsmen. Noble, selfless people fighting to make the world a better place, battling Grimm to push back the darkness and keep the kingdoms safe.

The reality was, Qrow had been sent to Beacon by his tribe of thieves and murderers so he could learn how to kill those selfless people for trying to stop their thieving and murdering. With such a different experience coloring the early years, he wasn’t sure how to answer Cinder's question, to convince her that people weren’t all as terrible as she'd been led to believe they were.

A good way to explain something to a child was with a story, to show by engaging example. A story about selflessness, about traveling the world and helping people, and all the different ways different people could do that for each other. One of the ones Oz always talked about and Qrow acted like he wasn’t listening closely.

Pulling the chair over to Cinder’s bedside, Qrow began, “Have you ever heard the Story of the Seasons?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keeping with all of RWBY’s allusions to legends, and along with the Cinderella stuff, the title of the story comes from the Many-Colored Crow, a Lenape story I read about a brilliantly colored crow who flies high into the sky during a cold winter and returns with fire down to the frozen land below, getting burned in the effort. I was shocked by how well it fit, especially since this chapter was already nearly finished _before_ I read it, searching through crow myths and trying to think of a title. The only addition after reading the legend was that, since the crow is bright and colorful but gets scorched black carrying the fire down, I added Tai's ugly ass suitcase for Qrow to ditch.


End file.
